"Todd Candey" <tcandey@usr.com> illuminates:
TC> I wonder how many new cars - regardless of mfg - would suffer
TC> unintended acceleration if those saftey locks were removed today.
TC>
TC> todd.
Which reminds me....
When I was working as a pump jockey while in High School,
a few years before the "unintended acceleration" episodes, how
many years I won't say....
I personally witnessed 6 incidents of the drivers leaving cars
at the pump with a passenger inside. When I was finished pumping,
the drivers hadn't returned (bathroom, coke machine etc.) and
seeing other vehicles waiting for a fill up, would put the
cars in Drive, "just a few feet, to make some room for the
car behind", and, as those on this list probably know, once
you get going...Park won't engage. Nobody ever got hurt,
but we had two go across two lanes of a very busy frontage
road and fall in the concrete drainage ditch. Coincidence or not,
of the six incidents I witnessed, 4 or them were Volvos.
The absolute most impressive of these was a Fiat (could of been an
Alfa), (older Italian cars had a "cruise control" cable, that was
nothing more than a cable going directly to the accelerator on the
carb) The passenger in the car put the car in Drive, and
when it didn't move, he pulled the "cruise control", which made
the car go to full throttle. It shot across the gas station, over
the concrete curb and slammed into some dumpsters. The passenger
jumped out of the car and left it there spinning and smoking the
tires. The way the car hit the dumpster let it's rear end swivel
back and forth, so you couldn't really approach the car to do
anything. After a while the tires go so hot one blew off the
rim and the other shredded sending tire shrapnel flying. The
wheels then started shooting impressive sparks out the back,
looked kinda like an horizontal Apollo mission. The rear fenders
were smoking like Renault Le Car fenders with a bad cat, when
the fire dept. showed up and hosed it down.
The other car was an old mustang. The common factor in all
of these was that the shifter was a console shifter, accesable
by the passenger. If I learned one thing, it was never to
underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
BCNU
... Two most common elements in the universe: Hydrogen & Stupidity.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12